Sunday, January 03, 2016

Holidays

I hope everyone had a happy New Year's Day, and will have a great 2016!

This past week, I was contemplating the difference in holidays between WoW, SWTOR, and FFXIV.

On one side, WoW and SWTOR both have somewhat grindy holidays. WoW used to have rare drop mounts, or collecting hundreds of eggs during Easter. SWTOR's Life Day holiday involves throwing hundreds of snowballs at people to collect the random parcels which are the currency.

In contrast, FFXIV holiday events are usually a short questline, maybe with a couple FATEs thrown in. If you complete the questline, which usually takes about an hour and can be done at low levels, you get all the rewards for the holiday. The grind is totally absent.[1]

Perhaps I'm reading too much into this, but it feels like the games have different philosophies towards holidays. WoW and SWTOR both say:

It's a holiday, so you probably have a lot of free time. Here's a way for you to spend that time.

FFXIV, in contrast, says:

It's a holiday, so you probably have other plans. Here's a short piece of content that you can quickly do to celebrate in-game, before you go.

Truthfully, the WoW/SWTOR attitude is probably more accurate for many of their players. But I like FFXIV's attitude better.

1. And it's not like FFXIV has any objection to grinds, as the Relic weapon questline proves.